A moving portrait of traditional Finnish American culture in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, highlighting that fragile community of memory connecting ourselves with parents and grandparents. It uses the “biographical model” of folklore filmmaking to tell the story of Erikki Vourenmaa, a 92-year-old Finnish immigrant, and his family living near Ironwood, Michigan. This three-generation farm family works, celebrates, reflects, and grieves together. The film explores the meaning of family, ethnic history, aging and intergenerational bonds. It contrasts between the immigrant elder, his American-born son and the partially assimilated grandchildren to illustrate change and continuity in the "sauna belt" of the Lake Superior Region. As Dr. Sharon Sherman concluded, “Loukinen’s focus on the bonds between generations will strike emotional chords about family relationships and ethnic identity for numerous cultural groups.”
A reclusive non-conforming immigrant arouses fear and suspicion within a conservative insular community.
Olivia (12), just moved with her family from New York and arrives for her first day of school. She struggles to find her place within the hierarchy of her new school. Finding herself caught between the popular students and her shy classmate, Alem, Olivia must ultimately make a choice about who she is and how she will navigate her newfound circumstances.
The encounter with a growing, and mostly undocumented, brazilian community allows us to bear witness to its energy, its vivacity, and its diversity. This film attempts to work for a larger acceptance of foreigners in their land of exile.
A personal account of the COVID-19 pandemic in America and its effects on an immigrant family as seen through the eyes of a student quarantined at his barren university.
Boiling Point (original title Kiehumispiste) describes the different reactions the Finnish people had to the large immigration amounts in 2015-2016.
Documentary about sub-Saharan immigration in Spain and Argentina focusing especially on the Senegalese community
My Baba Bozorg was a professor of literature in Tehran, Iran. He moved to Canada in 2002 to live with his son, my father. He spends his days, at large, seldom in his room on the top floor of our suburban home in Scarborough, Ontario. Primarily reading and writing, studying English, watching Persian films, following Persian news, and keeping company to our family dog, Oreo. He never misses his daily walk, morning and evening cups of tea, and telling me Dooset Daram (I love you) when our paths cross. He has watched me grow in this house for 21 of my 22 years of life. Our verbal exchange is remarkably limited given our understanding of one another. A bond I believe can be largely attributed to the beauty our language barrier allows us to see. Nothing about this film was coordinated or discussed prior to shooting. I saw him sleeping, and he woke up and saw me. The rest unfolded. No questions or hesitations.
Celia Adler, doyenne of the Yiddish stage, gives a haunting performance as a new immigrant forced to give up her son. Obsessed with the thought of reuniting with him, she spends the next 25 years searching, pining, and bewailing her loss.
The idea for this film comes from the encounter with two African boys who live in Rome, and is based on their music. Tunisian Afif and Senegalese Aliou tell their different stories, talk about friendship, immigration, freedom and, above all, about the fundamental value of making music together.
A documentary exploring the experiences and attitudes of Indian and Pakistani taxi drivers in New York City while also questioning the filmmaker's relationship to these South Asian immigrants and to his mixed-race heritage.
In a reimagining of a first-generation immigrant's experience, this short film follows the director's mother moving from Nigeria to Peckham.
A Ghanaian woman, Nana Ama, finds out at airport Schiphol that her papers are false. Her dream to start a new life in the United States falls apart. After escaping the authorities, she tries to earn a living in the Bijlmer in Amsterdam.
A short documentary that follows Korean grandparents as they share their modern-day reckoning of their immigration story and grandparenthood.
ICE conducted the largest immigration raids in US history at slaughterhouses in 2019, arresting and deporting undocumented workers. Despite the danger to herself and her family, former slaughterhouse worker Susana returns to the scene at night to care for animals on their way to the kill floor.
Documentary Film maker, Mark Brown, attempts to discover the damaging effect the over-spilling immigrant population has on the coastal city of Calais, France.
Artistic director of the National Theater Eric de Vroedt writes and directs a performance about his own mother Winnie, who passed away in 2020. This piece, titled The Century of My Mother, is a family story about the migration from the Dutch East Indies to the Netherlands. It is De Vroedt's way of examining the relationship with his mother and not having to say goodbye to her yet: 'I can let her live on stage, but when the curtain falls, when the play is completely finished, then she is really dead'.
Rosa is from Croatia and lives in Switzerland, with her husband who depends on her care. She takes care of everything. Her children have grown up and want to leave home. Rosa stays behind alone.
A boy struggles to reconcile his burgeoning queer identity with his filial duties and expectations from his Chinese immigrant mother.